One Mile Under (26 page)

“Four to five thousand gallons a day. I don’t know, you’d have to ask the bigwigs at the company on where it all comes from. I know much of it comes from the river.”

“Yeah, I saw trucks coming up from there. On the way back to Greeley.”

“That’s right. They have a pumping station down there. I think the company also has other sources. What do you do?”

Dani said, “I guess I kind of work with water, too. I’m a whitewater guide.”

“Cool. Whereabouts?”

“The Roaring Fork River. Outside Aspen.”

“Very cool.” His bison burger came. He put some onions and a pickle on it. “Sounds like a fun life to me.”

“Ever been there?”

“Once.” He took a bite. “Not too long ago. Mmmm …” He took a bite. “That was the right choice. So, hey, maybe I could show you if you’ve got some time …?”

“Show me what?”

“Where all that water comes from. That water facility down by the river. You seem to be interested.”

“I don’t know …” Dani shrugged. Maybe she had let it go too far. “We’re actually leaving later today. Besides, I thought you said you’ve never been there.”

“Hell, won’t take more than an hour.” The guy turned to her. “C’mon now, have a little pity on a guy who’s been out in the fields for a month. What do you say?”

What Dani would have said, had she not noticed two things that sent a tremor of caution running through her, was that she’d heard better pickup lines in grade school. But her eye went first to the guy’s hands, which were clean and smooth and trimmed down to the quick, and didn’t look like the hands of any oil field workman who’d been out in the field for a month.

And the second, since he kept glancing, was that a black SUV had pulled up on the street outside the café.

“So what’s your name?” the guy asked. His smile seemed to shift, no longer innocent and friendly. Now like there was something behind it. Almost professional.

That was when Dani placed where she had seen those hard, detached eyes.

“I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go,” she said, reaching in her bag for some bills.

“Dani, isn’t it? So what’s the rush?” he said. The man put his hand over hers, restraining her from going into her bag. A chill ran through her. Suddenly she saw who it was. Her mind hurtled back to the grainy photo Ty had shown her that he’d taken at Alpha. To Trey’s twisted and bloodied body she had found in the river.

“I’m John,” the guy said, still smiling, but the smile now frozen and empty. “John Robertson. Heard you were trying to find me, Dani.” He winked. “How about we just say, lunch is on me.”

Dani froze, bolts of fear rocketing down her.

Her heart went from beating a mile a minute to a dead stop. She took hold of her bag and tried to slide off the stool and away from him, her eyes never leaving his. Trying with everything she had not to show him the dread that was ricocheting in her chest.

“Why the rush, girl …?” Robertson tightened his grip. “Now that you finally found me, you don’t like what you see? So, listen up, here’s how we’re gonna do this …” The easygoing drawl hardened into a veiled command. “We’re going to walk out of here, nice and friendly like, and we’re going to get in that black SUV you see outside. Try something even remotely foolish, like yell or try to get away, and I’ll crack your arm in two right here, and I assure you, no one in here will do as much as lift a finger to help. So are we good …?” He lifted her hand back out of her bag. “And no point in checking to see if that uncle of yours is gonna come to the rescue. ’Cause he ain’t, I can assure you. I’m afraid he had a bit of an unexpected situation himself a few minutes ago.”

Dani froze. “What have you done with him?” Worry springing up in her.

Robertson made a kind of chirping noise. “Now don’t you worry about him, darlin’. You just come along. Nice and easy now. Now nod to me that you understand what I’m telling you and we’ll get going.”

“You’re hurting me,” Dani said under her breath, trying to wrestle her arm free.

“Just say you understand.” Robertson squeezed her even tighter, on a pressure point that made her feet buckle. “Or you won’t know what hurt is.”

She looked back at him, both in pain and terror. She didn’t know what they had done with Ty.
Please let him be all right
. But one thing was clear. Clear as anything she’d ever felt in her life.

She couldn’t get in that car.

Once she did, she knew she was as good as dead.

“I understand.” She finally nodded, and ripped her arm away. She looked around. Everyone behind the counter was working and the customers at the couple of tables still occupied seemed to be minding their own business.

“Good, then,” he said. “So we’re gonna walk out of here, kind of arm in arm, just like we were gonna go take that trip I talked about. And we’ll get in that SUV parked outside and no one will know the difference. So get on up now … and don’t make a move to run. Or I’ll crack that arm of yours like a twig. Just follow me.”

Robertson slowly stepped off his stool, and Dani desperately tried to make eye contact with the waitress and then the cook behind the counter. Maybe they sensed what was happening. But if they did, it was just like Robertson had said. Everyone was just going about their business.

“Something wrong with the burger, hon?” the waitress asked, seeing Robertson put some bills on the counter. “I could pack it up to go.”

“It was perfect,” Robertson said. “Something just came up.”

Dani caught her eyes. She gave her a look of alarm.
Can’t you see what’s happening? Call the police. Do something!
But she didn’t seem to understand. She only looked back at Dani without it registering, taking the cash. “Next time then.”

“Like I said,” Robertson chuckled, “no one’s gonna even lift a finger …”

Dani got up. The pressure on her arm pretty much forced her. She grabbed her bag. Two tables were occupied in the back of the café. It wasn’t clear to her if anyone actually saw what was going on. One or two seemed to be purposely averting their eyes. Others just continued on with their conversation.

“Nice and easy now …” Robertson said in her ear. He locked his hand on her arm and led her toward the door.

Dani’s heart was in a frenzy.

He’s going to kill me,
she told herself.
Just like Trey. And maybe Ty. Poor Ty … Oh, please don’t let that be true …
She desperately wished she could find a way to contact him. He hadn’t called her back, which only made the possibility seem worse.
Something could well have happened to him.
Her legs slid, wobbly and without strength, passing tables, people not looking or just going on with their normal business, not knowing anything improper was going on.
Can’t they see!

She thought of screaming out. They were ten feet from the front door. They couldn’t all just sit there and let him take her. Blind to what was happening. Just like with RMM. And if they saw, well, then Robertson couldn’t just do what he said, like what he had done to Trey. Too many people. As she walked, everything in slow motion, Dani’s eyes darted around to anything she could use against him. There was silverware on every table, knives and forks, but she knew she’d never get a full grasp on something in time—and even if she did, Robertson was a trained special ops guy. She’d never have a chance to use it.

I’ll break your arm off right here,
he said.

She also saw those old-fashioned metal napkin dispensers on every table, the edges pointed and sharp.

Six feet. Robertson dug his grip into her arm ever harder. “Almost there now.”

She couldn’t let him take her.

As they reached the door, it suddenly opened, and a woman stepped in, maybe in her fifties, in a blue blouse and open sweater vest. She gave them a smile in the doorway. Robertson smiled back as if nothing was happening.

Once she was out that door it was over for her. This was her only chance.

Now.

Her heart pounding, Dani lunged and reached for the table closest to the door, grabbing on to the napkin dispenser, and swung it up with her free hand as Robertson, one hand on her, held the door.

She hit him with the sharp edge in the forehead just above the left eye.

He shouted out, letting Dani go, the hand he had around her shooting up to his eye.

The woman screamed as Dani wrenched out of Robertson’s grasp, flinging her against him.

Then she bolted out the open door.

Outside, she almost ran headfirst into the black SUV pulled up there. There were two people in the front seats. She knew she had only seconds before Robertson, momentarily staggered, would come out after her. Even fewer before one of the two in the SUV would realize what was going on. The café was mid-block. Even though it was the town’s main street there was virtually no one milling around and a only few vehicles on the street. She looked desperately for a police car. For anyone she could run to. The passenger door to the black SUV opened. A man stepped out.

Dani took off down the street.

She ran past the storefronts, a knitting supply shop and a State Farm insurance office. At an alley, she glanced behind her. Robertson had now come out of the café, a hand to his head, and the guy from the SUV came up to him.

They pointed toward her.

She had to find a way out of here now.

She sprinted down the alley, which was behind the storefronts on the cross street perpendicular to Main Street. She had about fifty yards on them. They hadn’t even made it to the alley. She tore past the backs of the stores, searching frantically for a place to hide, her blood pumping feverishly. She knew she had to try Ty again. She only prayed he was somehow okay. She stopped and looked behind her; she saw two men turning into the alley. A back door was open to one of the shops and Dani ran in, locking the door behind her. It was an outdoors store, selling clothing and camping equipment. She pushed her way through a back storage room filled with boxes and garments on racks, toppling them in her panic, and then ran through a short hallway and into the main store. A female clerk looked toward her, hearing the agitation. “Ma’am, can I help you?”

Dani didn’t even know what to say. She was too panicked to even remain there the few seconds it would take to either call Ty or tell the woman what was happening.

“Call the police!” she said to the woman. “Please. There are two people chasing me.”

Suddenly, she heard pounding on the door in the back. “
Call them!
”

She bolted out the front.

She found herself on the street that was perpendicular to Main Street. The stores were even older and less busy there. She didn’t know if Robertson and the other man had come through the store, but there was another alleyway a couple of stores down where they’d be able to cut through and intercept her. She heard the two men coming down the alley, shouting. She ran across the street. She came upon a small side street and headed down it. She passed a bakery and a small crafts store with cheap, beaded jewelry in the window. She pressed against the building, keeping her breath still, fumbling in her purse for her phone. She grabbed it, finding Ty’s number in her recent history, and punched at the keys, frantic, clumsily, until finally pushing the call icon with both thumbs to make sure it went through. Heart racing, she peered around the corner and saw the two men come out onto the street. To her surprise, Robertson wasn’t one of them. They both had to be from the SUV.

Where the hell had Robertson gone?

To her anxiety, Ty’s voice mail came on.
Dammit, no …
Under her breath, she started to tell him what had happened.

Suddenly they seemed to spot her across the street and pointed.

She ended the call.

There was a row of hedges on the right and a chain link fence that separated her from the parking lot of a Kroger food market. She sprinted down the length of it, not knowing where to go. She spun around the corner. It was a small parking alley: garbage cans and dumpsters, and a garbage truck making its way down the street, one man driving, the other throwing the contents of each receptacle into the compactor. Dani didn’t know if she could outrun them anymore. The truck chugged down the narrow street ahead of the guy loading the trash, a black guy with a bandana around his head who had stopped to chat with a store worker. Dani ran up to the truck while his back was turned. The men pursuing her couldn’t be more than a couple of steps behind.

Seeing no other way out, Dani pulled herself up on the truck out of the sight of the chatting garbage man. She climbed up a short metal ladder, basically a footstep and a rail for the workmen to hold on to during the ride, and hoisted herself up onto the rim of the truck’s compactor and scrambled onto the top. For someone who’d been rock climbing since her teens, it was an easy task. The driver heard nothing from the cab; the truck’s engine was running and the compactor was churning loudly. Dani lay there, glued to the sloped roof of the truck, breathing heavily, her heart almost pounding its way out of her chest.

She was petrified to even look up. She shifted onto her side, and maybe a block away, across from the food market, she saw the new police department, one of those modern redbrick buildings that seemed so out of place here. She remembered what Ty had said about his encounter with the chief. But they were still the police. They couldn’t just hand her over to people who were trying to kidnap her. The truck began to move with a jerk and loud rumble, the guy who was loading the bags catching up and slapping the side for it to move onto the next store. Dani rolled onto her side and found her phone. She pressed Ty’s number again.
Where is he? What happened to him?

She hit
REDIAL
.

The line connected again.
C’mon, please, Ty, pick up.
She heard it ring. Once. Twice. Three times.
Please …
she begged.

To her amazement, this time she heard his voice.

“Where are you?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

“
No!
” she said, terrified. Her heart beat madly and she peered down the block. “I’m not. I’m being chased in town. Thank God, you’re all right. I ran into Robertson and he said you were—”